Spider In His Ear
by Patricia Sage
Summary: How, exactly, Matt happened to get a spider in his ear.  Poor dear.


**Author's Note: Okay so here's my other attempt at a Glee fanfiction! I love Matt to death and I miss him sooo much in the show! This one is based on the episode (I can't remember the name) where they do duets in the first season. You know, where Rachel and Shue sing 'Endless Love' and it's mentioned that Matt isn't there because he got a spider in his ear. Here's my take on that story.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Glee or nothin'.**

Matt Rutherford sighed. He tapped his pencil against the desk in his bedroom as he thought. Math homework was always the worst. He could never get it. He attempted another problem before giving up. The boy thought about getting the answers from Mike, or even one of his glee club friends. Matt crossed the room and flung himself on his bed. He really liked being in glee club. The singing and dancing he didn't really mind, but the reason he liked it a lot was because he got so many good friends out of the club. Matt had never felt more at ease than when he was dancing and singing quietly in the background, with so many great and talented people around him.

It was 11:00pm and Matt could not get to sleep, nor could he get his homework done. He was bored out of his mind. And, of course, when a teenager is bored they usually go and find something to eat. Not because they're hungry; they're just looking for something to do.

He decided that he might as well do that. He sat up on the bed and, trying to step as silently as possible, Matt made his way to the route from his bedroom to the kitchen. He didn't want to wake his parents up, so he avoided the spots on the old staircase that he knew creaked when one stepped there. He abandoned the mission to the kitchen, however, when he saw that a light in his brother's bedroom was on. Abandoning the food, because now he had something to do, he crept over to the room.

Normally, Matt wouldn't go into his older brother's room. Sure, they got along fine, but Jason's room was his sanctuary and he never let anyone enter it. However, tonight Jason was out partying, and Matt knew that he hadn't come home yet or he would have heard him. Easing open the door, the brown-haired boy stepped silently inside.

Jason's room was filled with many different kinds of posters that a typical teenage boy would have, from women to rock bands to video games. There was clothing strewn all over the bedroom floor. Shelves lined the walls. On the first shelf, which was at about the same height as Matt's head, there was a tank that contained its resident-Jason's tarantula, Jane. Jane wasn't that big, as tarantula's go. She was actually very small. But, Matt really didn't like her at all. Spiders sort of freaked him out and Matt thought that Jason had bought Jane just to mess with his younger brother.

The tank had a built-in light, which was the source of the illumination that Matt had seen from outside the room. Matt could see Jane scuttling around in her home and directed his gaze away with a shudder. Instead, he looked around for what he had come for-Jason's videogame system. Like many things that Jason owned, he wouldn't let Matt use it, and the younger boy wanted to play Call of Duty, just once. His football friends raved about it all the time and Matt was ashamed that he had never played.

He found the game system beside a dead lava lamp and the T.V. was on the shelf above the one that contained only Jane's tank. The videogame console, however, he couldn't find. He looked through the bedroom high and low, but was soon getting tired, both physically and mentally. Was this searching even worth it? It was nearing 11:30 now and he had no idea when his older brother would be home. Maybe he should just go for the food and forget about Call of Duty.

Matt was crouched under the shelves, going through Jason's clothing in a last search for the console, when he heard the door open loudly downstairs. Forgetting where he was, for a moment, Matt shot up off the floor in a guilty panic. He happened to be right under the peice of wood that held Jane's tank, which he soon found out the hard way as he bashed his head on the underside of the shelf. This impact caused not only Matt to fall to the ground, but the shelf and tank as well.

His head pounding from the blow to his head as well as from the noise, Matt could do nothing but curl up as things fell around him. He was lucky, as the big chunk of wood landed centimeters from his feet and the heavy tank landed near his head. The lid must have blown off of it, or maybe it shattered, the details didn't really matter to Matt. All he knew was that, through his daze of pain, he felt Jane's hairy legs as she climbed into his ear. Why that spider had decided to go there and what he should do to remove her fled Matt's mind as panic and fear took over everything.

If the noise of the crash hadn't woken Matt's parents or allerted his brother, the scream that followed certainly did. His mother, father and Jason rushed into the room as quickly as possible to see Matt on the ground, shouting about a spider in his ear. At first they thought that his mind had snapped, but they all saw the tank on the ground, missing a spider, and decided that they should take him to the hospital either way.

Matt was rushed to the emergency room and Jane was removed, not that the boy was conscious anyway. He had fainted almost as soon as his family had entered the room and taken stock of the situation. All he knew was that he woke up in a hospital bed with a guilty older brother and worried parents beside him.

Later that week, his fellow glee club members had sent a bouquet of flowers to his house with a cute little 'get well' card. When Matt returned to school, he started to make regular visits to Ms. Pilsbury's office due to recurring, spider-related nightmares. He never went into his brother's room again.

**Author's Second Note: :( Poor Matt. He just wanted to play CoD. Let's pretend that the New Directions actually cared enough to give him flowers...not just one sentence in the episode. Review? Matt loves you!**

**Take care.**  
><strong>-Patricia Sage<strong>


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